keep heart-healthy. live long. eat the 100% goodness of post shredded wheat. doctors recommend it. what started out in arizona is not staying in arizona, and organizers for gay rights say they are winning battles that extend to texas, kentucky, and potentially the u.s. congress. we're going to look at the politics to the backlash and why republicans eyeing the white house may be the next to evolve on marriage equality. and west coast wash out. after an epic drought, california's about to get soaked with more rain than they'd get in a year. brutal cold in the northeast and another snowstorm, we have your winter check this morning. then a special guest today. he likes long walks on the beach, rocket science, and playing for keeps on jeopardy!. rush holt is here to talk about why he is leaving capitol hill.

good morning, i'm ari melber in for chris jansing. those stories are coming up, but we begin with the battle to replace people like rush holt. on tuesday, a major primary in texas, and democrats are rooting for wendy davis there. today, president obama meanwhile speaking to the dnc about what democrats should focus on. the speech is this afternoon and a white house aide said the president will say trickle down economics doesn't work, while the president believes the economy works best when grows from the middle out. >> i can't think of a time, for real, since i was elected in '72, where the majority of the american people agreed with us on every major issue we're for. so what are we worried about? >> got to love it when joe biden

says "for real." republicans say trends favor the gop, which is true. their numbers are going to rebound and some of them, like this guy, are going to predict a wave election. >> i think if the election were held today, republicans would take the senate. i think there's a possibility that it is an election year on the order of magnitude of 2010. i think we could see a surprising pickup, and i think you're starting to see a lot of democrats get very, very nervous. >> and let's bring in some reporters who are directly on this beat. kate covers buzz feed for congress and perry bacon. kate, let's start right with you, you were recently writing about this and said democrats were hoping liberals would drive turnouts in the midterms, and you heard there what we're reporting, the president today is going to talk about this middle-out growth, a much more

populist message. >> this is central for them. when you look at the numbers, african-american voters, women voters, latino voters, it's huge. if they can get just 2% of the electorate who tends to drop off, that could mean democratic wins in swing districts and potentially in swing democratic states where incumbents are trying to hold on appealing to that populist liberal message. >> perry, you were just down in a place where you got senator mcconnell facing attacks on both sides for his right for matt beavan, who is certainly softening him up and what they would call the center left in alison lundergan grimes. however, what we're seeing nationally is 63% favorable ratings for republicans, 61% compared to 53% for democrats. we've got that up on the screen.

in some places it includes conservatives, right? >> right, ari. when i was in kentucky, the distinctive thing i heard from alison grimes, in particular, and other candidates, as well, democrat candidates want to turn this away from obama and obamacare. you're in kentucky and arkansas, obama and obamacare are not that popular. grimes is really trying to turn this into a campaign about mitch mcconnell and about the republicans and they being the force of gridlock and blocking things in washington. you're going to see a lot of these candidates focusing very negative on their republican, trying to turn the election into a referendum on the gop, as well as a referendum on obama and obamacare. >> i think you're seeing an echo of that, kate. perry's talking, of course, about kentucky and what mcconnell is doing. rand paul, of course, another outsized name from kentucky. take a listen to what he said. it speaks to perry's argument here that some republicans are

concerned about the attacks on the party and the idea that you can't win on attacking the aca alone, and they are talking about inclusion. take a listen. >> when we present our message, if we want a bigger crowd and win politically, our message has to be a happy message, one of optimism, one of inclusiveness, one of growth, one of a message that actually brings up the people who are poor among us, brings up those long-term unemployed and finds them jobs. >> don't worry, be happy? >> this is part of the problem, they do need to present solid ideas, but in an election season, you don't want to give away too much that the democrats could attack them with, right, so what we're seeing from the gop is kind of a holding pattern. here are our ideas, here are our principles. we probably won't see solid legislation from them in the next nine months, an obamacare replacement, per se. they'll probably release principles, what they want to see in health care, but they

know it's not enough to just continually attack the president and continually attack democrats. >> perry -- perry, what did you make of that, the idea of playing the happiness card? >> i disagree with rand paul a little bit here. i think you broadly can win a election without having ideas on your side. 2006, the democrats ran as bush being really bad. 2010, the republicans won by saying obama is bad. congressional elections you can win by saying the other side is bad. the map is in the republicans' favor. i would say rand paul is looking forward a little bit. you cannot win a presidential election by being the antiparty and that's what he's talking about it. >> i think that's an astute point and goes to how these politicians think about their own plans more sometimes than the party's plan and he was at a five-year tea party conversation, and the tea party seems to think it's got several people that should not only drive the debate, but

potentially take over the nominating process from what they consider the moderates. we'll see how they do on that. thanks for your time today. we are now going to check the news feed, as we like to do. staying in washington where one focus today is on gun violence. 30 minutes ago, nancy pelosi joined sara brady and relatives to mark 20 years since the brady bill passed and are renewing a call for stronger background checks. in connecticut, a state panel is reviewing the newtown school shootings and hearing about something they call incident management. the panel is expected to submit recommendations on that later this year, an important story. and about 5,000 documents from bill clinton's presidency will be released today. some think it will be the tip of the iceberg, considering the next two weeks we'll get notes over his eight-year term, no text messages, though. the pages are expected to contain confidential communications between the former president, advisers,

wife, and first lady hillary rodham clinton. viktor yanukovych appeared in public. he held a news conference a short time ago in russia and told reporters he intends to keep fighting for ukraine's future and also blamed the west for his country's crisis and said he is not asking right now for military assistance. ukraine's interior minister said russian troops have now taken control of two main airports. russian forces in the area do, however, deny involvement. the country also asking the u.n. security council to intervene in what we know is an escalating conflict and a precarious situation. coming up, this week may have been the biggest week for gay rights since the supreme court decided doma in june. how can the lgbt community seize on the momentum? we're going to have the president of g.l.a.d. later this hour. ♪

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we're looking at some misery on both coasts as we leave february with two major storms ready to hit hard. in the east, no relief from the arctic temperatures a foot of snow ready to fall as a storm moves from colorado to new york and california. look at this, a year's worth of rain is expected to hit in the next 24 hours. yikers. that's what we want? we're going to find out why we want that. meteorologist bill karins joins us with an explanation of what's good and what's bad here. >> the good is the california rain. we don't want people losing their homes to mudslides, but to fill up the reservoirs that are at the lowest levels ever recorded, we want it to just pour and it has been. the huge storm, you can see the swirl here. by the way, if you're in the east or the midwest, this is the same storm that's going to get

you this weekend, so it's starting here. not even onshore yet, so we still have a ways to go, going to take about four and a half days to move across the country. l.a., an inch of rain, that's cold right there, half inch in sacramento, little in the reservoirs to build up. already in anticipation of that storm going across the country, these are winter storm watches that are up from kansas city to pittsburgh and soon for the new york city, philadelphia area, and possibly around washington, d.c. and got my eyes on the boston area, too. this is how i see it taking place. the green shows you where it's going to rain, pink is where it's icy and wintery mix, white is best chance of all snow. timing of it is sunday to monday, the bulk and the worst of this storm system. as far as the snow goes, that pink coloring, six to 12 inches of snow and some of this is on top of snow, too. kansas city, you dent get a lot of six to ten inch snowfalls. chicago looks to be on the

northern edge of this as we go throughout sunday. st. louis, three to six, and indianapolis, you're going to end up with your snowiest winter ever, predicting you at six to ten. then as we slide east, we're watching that band of heavy snow in the areas that don't need it with at least a foot on the ground. pittsburgh area, eight to 12, philadelphia, six to ten, boston, northern edge. d.c. looks snow to wintery mix, but you get the picture, this is monday, back to work, back to school. a lot of kids -- a lot of schools don't have snow days left and a lot of these areas won't have school on monday. >> i tell you, bill, the only patriotic point i can say here is when you look at the earlier map, we're all under one weather system together. is that a silver lining? >> yes, red and blue is purple. right? >> that's political, but one nation under snow. we'll keep an eye on it. thanks for your reporting today. coming up, oscar preview

party, everyone is doing their oscar picks, but some of the real action is on twitter with a new hash tag, new oscar category, some of it is funny. that's later this hour. we asked people a question, how much money do you think you'll need when you retire? then we gave each person a ribbon to show how many years that amount might last. i was trying to, like, pull it a little further. [ woman ] got me to 70 years old. i'm going to have to rethink this thing. it's hard to imagine how much we'll need for a retirement that could last 30 years or more. so maybe we need to approach things differently, if we want to be ready for a longer retirement. ♪

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[ train whistle blows ] ♪ my mom works at ge. ♪ welcome back, and we turn to some good news in politics. over the past year, there's really no political debate which has seen more action than marriage equality and gay rights, when arizona's governor vetoed a bill to authorize segregation this week, calls to veto came from national republicans, conservatives, political organizers, but also from eight political business and commerce groups. it came amidst other victory on offense and perhaps in the culture. for the first time ever, the supreme court recognized some

gay marriages last june and that paved the way for rulings in the past two days in traditional conservative states, texas and kentucky, and the culture's moving even faster. over the past few weeks with the world watching, johnny weir stood up for the spirit, or take this issue, all this from michael sam, the missouri defensive end who came out and is now expected to be the first openly gay professional football player, then there's jason collins, he came out in may. that's right, after 67 years from when jackie robinson broke baseball's color line in brooklyn, collins broke basketball's identity line in brooklyn. these athletes, these moments, i don't think they are just an uplifting aside to the political story, they are one of the drivers to the politics here because the historic discrimination of gay americans

often left the nation unaware of so many great gay americans. from sports, to pop culture, america has more gay friends today than it's ever known before. joining us now to look at this, sarah kate ellis and dana liebelson. what do you make of the events and whether there's something bigger happening than just a veto in arizona? >> hi, good morning. i think what's happening, now gay people are a part of the american values system and we're included and i think we're seeing that in the south. we saw that in arizona, and we're seeing that in sports, as well. and it's important, it's been an important couple of weeks. >> yeah, and dana, you've been reporting on this, what i call the backlash to the backlash is a big part of what's driving this here, so you've written about basically what you call inside the conservative campaign

to launch jim crow-style bills against gay americans and i'm going to put up a calendar on screen from your article, basically you point out we saw bills pop up like this in january 16th in kansas, at the end of the month in idaho, january 30th, south dakota, february 5th, tennessee. what was going on here that so many of these bills that basically we're trying to carve out a bigger legal ability to discriminate against people because they are gay, why is this all happening together? >> it's interesting, these bills sort of all came at once, when i looked into it, i found a network of conservative groups working on these bills, pushing them, helping write the language, but what's interesting, a couple of weeks ago i was writing about the jim crow bills taking the office by storm, but we've seen these bills die in arizona, ohio, mississippi, just in georgia last night, i got an e-mail from

a representative who said he was completely getting rid of the discriminatory language. i think the tide's really changing. >> walk us through that. all these things are partly driven by a type of conservative campaigning and not all conservative by any means, definitely not the national level, and then the backlash has some of these folks backing off the bills, folks not seeing them as first amendment religious freedom, and yet the federal level as we've been reporting, it is still legal to discriminate in the workplace. >> yeah, and that's where we really need the focus to be on at this point, because so many gay and lesbian and transgender people can be fired right now in their home states for working, in working, just for being lgbt, and i think that's really important and that's a little known fact around this country that in more states you can be

fired for being lgbt just for working. and i think that's something that we really need to start focusing on, and almost, you know, these bills have been stirring up almost a distraction about getting the real work done, because these bills are so outlandish that even the middle of america's standing up against them because they are straight up against our american values as a society. >> sure, i suppose that's a question, especially for an organization like yours, is it a distraction or is it a way to try to reorient the alliances around these issues? if you take some of what the local chambers of commerce and the super bowl folks said in arizona, didn't want to be defined by this, does that help move you at the national level? the bill we're talking about that would protect gay americans from this type of retaliation has not been endorsed by the national chamber of commerce, sarah. >> this absolutely helps us move in that direction, and i think, you know, i always say at

g.l.a.d. we have doubled the work, because we now have to protect the achievements that we've made over the past few years, and then we still have to advocate for those things that need to be changed. >> yeah, that makes sense. sarah kate ellis, appreciate your perspective from g.l.a.d. and dana, glad to have you today. we're going to move to strategists, as well, this is going to play out as a potential ballot box issue and potentially in the 2016 white house race. how, we don't know, but that's why we want to bring in a couple political pros, margie o'mara and hogan gidley. hope, i want to start with you here, you heard the conversation we've been having, what are the politics here and does it matter you've had so many national republicans come in and say, as we've mentioned, no to this arizona bill, but not necessarily come on board with a lot of these other advancements. >> well, it shows that many in

the republican party recognize that they need to move a little bit towards the middle, to where the majority of americans are. remember, a majority of americans now support gay marriage and there are a lot of republicans who, i think, privately support gay marriage. the problem is, you have a faction of the republican primary party that votes in primaries that is pulling the party further to the right than i think the party knows it needs to be, and i know that that's, i think, where you'll see the party end up further down -- a long way from now. i don't think you'll see this year a lot of republican leaders coming out for gay marriage, but fact you saw this huge backlash against the arizona bill shows they need to move to the middle, which is good progress for everybody. >> let me go to hogan on this. you're a republican and work for republicans with very different views on this issue, yet you know republicans under the age of 40 do overwhelmingly think

that marriage equality is a settled issue and they support it, and this is one of those issues where people don't change their minds that much, if they tend to go for support, we don't see in the polling a lot of people go five years later and change their mind. if this is the future of the republican party, when do you think it becomes the present of the republican party? >> look, the president himself changed his mind, so it's obvious some people don't have a problem changing their mind on the issue, but you did mention a strong faction in the republican party who will never change and can never change because of their fast-held beliefs to the bible. >> let me jump in there, and you say that, and i understand there's strong religious beliefs here, but as we all know, religious beliefs can strongly undergird opinions that ultimately change. we all know religion was cited repeatedly in a different context for racial segregation, then people moved on and a lot of religious believers today do

not look at their teachings any more as a justification for that. >> well, that's because that was perversion of scripture. look, scripture doesn't change. the guide is the same yesterday, today, forever, the evangelical will tell you and because they believe that way, to use scripture in a way to prof ul gait segregation is wrong and a misuse of scripture. that's a separate altogether, ari. >> i don't want to go too deeply theological, and you might just win that debate, if it comes to certain parts of the book i don't know as well, but what i also want to get in is the politics on 2016. margie, are there going to be republicans that decide when they are running, they need to be the first mainstream republican presidential candidate to be open to marriage equality? margie first. >> i think there are some republicans who might be a candidate for doing that. i don't know if that's a winning

strategy in some of these early primary states. i don't know if you can win iowa or you can win south carolina in the republican primary if you are that candidate. if you are the only candidate, is there an argument if you're the only candidate of a pac that says i'm for gay marriage, do you win over a group that wants a candidate who is, quote, unquote, electable? we'll see. that strategy has not always been effective in the republican primary, so whether that's going to be a different climate in 2016, i don't know. i hope so for the sake of our collective political discourse and for the lgbt community around the country, that we are not continuing to relitigate a fight in our politics that the american people are now moving and seem to have decided. i hope that's not the case, but i fear we're still going to have these divisive debates come up in these primaries. >> hogan? >> part of this is a branding issue that republicans have clearly lost. early on, remember this was gay marriage and it seemed like the

homosexual community wasn't really getting much traction on that, then it went to marriage equality and you've seen successes at every level of government. it's not some of the backlash that will cause to make people to rethink their positions on this politically and otherwise, but it's not the backlash per se, but i think it's the victory from the homosexual community. they've been content with winning victories at every level of government over the course of decades, whereas the tea party swings for the fences every time, the homosexual community seems they are happy getting a single, double, triple, which will ultimately result into what they want, which is a marriage equality for everybody. >> i think what you're talking about, and it's always a debate of strategy over how much incrementism that you want and the tea party fashion itself is very principled. sometimes that's run them into a brick wall of practicality, even republicans have said that. when you refer to what's happening here, it's bigger than politics, because the culture is finding there are so many more gay americans who are relatable, who are just like everyone else,

and it gets harder and harder to say the government, including a conservative perspective and i think quite honestly from a religious perspective, it's hard to say it's the government's role to reflect that love people may choose to have privately as a public society. it's a tough issue. that's a big -- go ahead, briefly. >> i would argue also, it's well beyond simply the lgbt community. there are a lot of folks who have been fighting for marriage equality. it's a majority of americans. >> right, exactly. look, i appreciate having you both on today. margie omero and hogan gidley. thank you. >> thanks, god bless. we're going to turn briefly to breaking news, kerry kennedy, daughter of robert f. kennedy has been found not guilty of driving while impaired. kennedy said she did not mean to take a sleeping pill before she got into her car and she veered into a truck and ended up

slumped over into the wheel. coming up, in his first interview since his retirement, five-time jeopardy! champion and rocket scientist, literally, rush holt will talk about saving the world from robot attacks and global warming. you don't want to miss it. [ male announcer ] whether it takes 200,000 parts,

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and finally, the only member of congress ever to take on the super computer and win, from new jersey's 12th district, the man who will beat the robot uprising, congressman rush holt! >> governor rush? >> rush? >> secretary kerry. >> john kerry's correct. >> rush. >> mel watt! >> that was rush holt on msnbc's "up against the clock." he could beat super computer watson but didn't manage to best two former members of congress in that competition, but holt is now joining what is a growing

list of lawmakers who will not run for re-election this year. so far, 21 members of the house, 11 republicans and ten democrats have announced their retirement. how's it all going? well, we are excited to have congressman rush holt with us now. how are you? >> good to be with you, i'm good, thanks, and you? >> i'm good. i want to start with something you said when you first announced your retirement in "the new york times." this is how the times put it, holt from new jersey won't seek re-election for congress. you said, congress, even with its frustrations, is the greatest instrument for justice and human welfare in the world. on that point, what do you feel has been some of your best achievements or impacts while serving in your tenure? >> well, thanks. this is not a time for a retrospective, first of all, i'm not using the word retire. i'm not running for re-election, that's true. i'm going to be the respective of 750,000 people in new jersey for the rest of this year. you know, i've worked in

education, environment, science research, policy, and civil liberties, and, oh, voting procedures. a number of things over the, well, now nearly two decades. i'm in my 16th year, i guess. so i could point to a number of those things. but i do stand by that statement, that the congress is the greatest instrument. doesn't always work perfectly, there are days when it hardly works at all, but it is a great instrument for justice and human welfare. >> yeah, and i understand that you feel that way, and i think that probably comes from your pride of office and the hard work you do, but the composition congress has changed a lot, as we mentioned, "the times" and others focus on the fact when you depart, only one scientist will be left, there are a lot fewer veterans than there used to be, there's a lot more upper, upper incomes, anyone stationed

in life and previous job or role or training isn't the only thing you can say about them. i do think it's fair to say that the institution has changed in the aggregate of who's in it, and i don't think it's a research to say that a lot of folks who look at the problems facing the country feel it's unfortunate that there aren't more, for example, scientists. do you think that's an issue at all? >> yeah, i don't have the statistics on the change or the composition of congress, but as for more scientists in congress, i'm a strong advocate of that. you know, until we reach that golden age where all americans know how to think like scientists, know how to think comfortably about science, we will need some trained scientists and engineers in congress. you know, it's not that scientists are smarter, but there are some habits of mind that you learn as a scientist, to be faithful to the evidence, to actually revere the evidence,

to be able to think statistically and problem listicly. >> i'm going to jump in on the evidence and say there's a lot of evidence on climate change, what do you make of that, why is that hard for people to understand the facts on that? >> well, some of it is willful ignorance, some of it is that it is complicated. some of it is that people have trouble thinking statistically, you know, they think anecdotally and personally, and so to get some distance and perspective on something that has a lot of, as scientists would say, noise in the system, is difficult, but also, there has been active disinformation. i mean, the koch brothers and have others have spent millions to sow the seeds of doubt about climate change, just as decades ago the tobacco companies with the link between smoking and

cancer. everybody knows somebody who's 80 or 90 years old who's been smoking all their lives and haven't died of cancer, so you see, must not cause cancer. there's no question that in the last few years, a lot of the public has started to say, well, aren't there a lot of doubts about this climate change science? yeah, it's cold this winter here in new york or new jersey or washington, but it's warmer in alaska. come on, the oceans are warmer, you know, the scientists are quite clear on this. but it's easy to convince people and their representatives in congress that there are some doubts and maybe we shouldn't take action, even though the evidence is clear enough that we certainly should be taking action right now, because climate change is costly in lives and dollars, it's deadly and we should be doing something about it. a lot more. >> congressman, you mention the money and disinformation,

comparison to tobacco, but i like the phrase you use, the relying on anecdotal information. it's funny, in politics we use the word narrative so often, what's a campaign's narrative, candidate's narrative, a narrative is a story, so when made up on issues, it's a lot harder to legislate. we are going to retire this segment, but doesn't mean either of us are done working. democratic congressman rush holt, thanks for your time. >> good to be with you. >> good to be with you. now we're going to talk economics and stocks soaring to new heights. apparently bankrupt, our friend, cnbc's mandy drury is here. mandy, s&p 500 hit that record high yesterday. what's going on? >> yeah, and it's pushing further and further today. we have a nice little rally on our hands as i'm speaking. you know, yesterday, ari, i think it was the testimony that the new fed chairwoman janet yellen gave because it was

perceived as market friendly. she said it would take a significant change to the economy's prospects for the fed to put its plans to taper or reduce the bond buying program on hold, suggesting no serious concern about that recent string of economic indicators that we've seen that have been coming in fairly week, or at least below forecast, so a lot of people have been saying it's the weather, severe winter, as opposed to worsening fundamentals, so i think that was a calming point of view for the market. as we stand, all three major indexes are set to end this month and the week with gains. and the nasdaq is on track for its fourth straight weekly rise. i should also really quickly point out, one big stand out yesterday in trade was a massive pop in jcpenney's stock. some say there's a bit of a short squeeze going on, short interest, but it did come out with holiday earnings that crumpled concerns about the future. so there's certainly one we're

keeping an eye on today, as well. >> that's funny, you and i were talking about being a populous as a consumer yesterday, ever buy jcpenney? >> no, we're not allowed to buy stocks. >> no, clothing. >> yes, absolutely. absolutely, yeah, there's that really swish nice newly refurbished jcpenney down in midtown. i've got quite a lot of stuff there. >> i'm a filing spaceman man. there's markdowns on suits and ties that would knock your socks off. >> good for you. >> all right, cnbc's mandy drury, let's do this again some time. we'll be right back. is this the thing you gave my husband? well, yeah, yes. the "name your price" tool. you tell us the price you want to pay, and we give you a range of options to choose from. careful, though -- that kind of power can go to your head. that explains a lot. yo, buddy! i got this. gimme one, gimme one, gimme one!

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while uncommon among people under 50, people who recently had a head or neck injury have tripled the risk of a stroke within four weeks of the injury. researchers stated this may be used to the injuries tearing blood vessels that lead to the brain. here's something you may not know, it's oscar weekend. you probably did know that, this sunday. oscar viewing has in many ways been a bit of a second super bowl, but there's no football. no, it's considered the second highest priced real estate on tv, with ads and advertisers now forking over $1.8 million for a 30-second spot. that's a lot of money. second only to super bowl sunday. it's a point we'll continue to make throughout this lead script. there's oscar viewing parties as the envelopes are open, last year peeked out at more than 85,000 tweets a minute when "argo" collected the top prize. no one remembered "argo" anymore. i thought it was a boring movie.

the oscars will stream on line, joining us now, special preview from nbc news.com supervising entertaining editor. how are you? >> i'm so excited. >> you're pumped for the oscars? >> totally pumped. >> as you know, number one nonsponsored trending topic on twitter right now, what's a tv oscar segment without reading off tweets? the category, which is tongue in cheek, is "new oscar categories." i'm going to read you a couple of these tweets to give you a sense of what's happening out there. this is from someone named link blinson. new oscar category, best use of glasses to denote a female as, "ugly," until they are dramatically removed. that happens a lot. >> that happens a lot and we hear so many actors are brave because they decided not to go into full hair and makeup for their roles.

it's not brave, first of all, but the glasses oftentimes help. >> one thing about hollywood, it's male dominated and run, and you see that not only in what projects are picked, but in the depiction of women repeatedly, you're the less attractive woman when it's some beautiful starlet popped glasses on. another tweet for you, most meryl streepist meryl streep. and i threw in one of my own here, no pressure on you to enjoy this tweet. >> except there is. >> my new oscar category is, best performance defined by a mediocre accent. what do you think? >> i'm not going to throw any names out there. but back to meryl streep, meryl streep has been in more times than god in the oscars, but this time it's not going to be the meryl streep event that a lot of times it is. cate blanchett is supposed to, according to all the buzz, and

if you look at how people have voted in the award shows leading up to this, she should be probably winning for best actress in "blue jasmine." >> what about "wolf of wall street"? this was big in every way, three hours, over the top, sparked a lot of conversations over is it spoofing wall street and chauvinism and greed, and pushing those things or is it encouraging? >> these are movies, they are not documentaries, unless you're in the documentary category. we're always talking about how much truth was in that. there was a lot of discussion, you mentioned "argo" earlier, did that exactly happen, no, it's a movie, not a documentary. but whether leonardo can make the push for best actor, good luck. we talk all the time about his time, or her time when it comes to winning these awards. i do think it's matthew's time.

all the cards are for them. >> this is a film that got a lot of people talking. i felt it wasn't just about getting in love with an operating system, but worked as a love story period. part of the theme of "her," for those at home, by now you have to have seen it or you're not seeing it. part of the theme is sometimes you think you're in love with someone and later you figure out, not only did it not work out, but you might have never been in love. >> really revealing here. i feel you're opening up a lot. >> i think that's something people can relate to. some people are, it's a computer, it's a computer. the reassessment the character goes under of saying, was this really even a love affair or was i stupid for having these feelings. >> also the technology element in there is something that's very appreciate today. will it win a lot of oscars

would suggest the best movie always wins and it just doesn't. this is politics in a different way. >> you're saying i proceeded from a false premise? >> not necessarily, but there are oscar campaigns for a reason. you see the ads taken out, there's rules after rules about how you can approach oscar voters and convince them to see your film, talk about the film. "her" didn't have that same oscar campaign. >> they may have a lot of money in the big studios to get some of these films buzz, but money can't buy you love. >> i say that all the time. >> i'm glad we talked about breakups today. thank you for your time. >> thanks a lot. >> supervising entertaining editor, thank you very much. and we'll be right back. [ female announcer ] aveeno® with soy helps reduce the look of brown spots in 4 weeks. for healthy radiant skin. aveeno®. naturally beautiful results.

♪ we asked people a question, how much money do you think you'll need when you retire? $500,000. maybe half-million. say a million dollars. [ dan ] then we gave each person a ribbon to show how many years that amount might last. ♪ i was trying to like pull it a little further. you know, i was trying to stretch it a little bit more. [ woman ] got me to 70 years old. i'm going to have to rethink this thing. [ man ] i looked around at everybody else and i was like, "are you kidding me?" [ dan ] it's just human nature to focus on the here and now.

so it's hard to imagine how much we'll need for a retirement that could last 30 years or more. so maybe we need to approach things differently, if we want to be ready for a longer retirement. ♪ ♪ what are you guys doing? having some fiber! with new phillips' fiber good gummies. they're fruity delicious! just two gummies have 4 grams of fiber! to help support regularity! i want some... [ woman ] hop on over! [ marge ] fiber the fun way, from phillips'.

and to politics now, where mitt romney and chris christie's fundraising reunion tour raked in a million for the rga. the boston globe reported all the media attention actually

forced a last-minute venue change from a chairman of new balance's home to the lennox hotel. meanwhile, first lady michelle obama will have her own reunion with amy poehler on "parks and recreation." poehler introduced the first lady where the first lady joked, they are best friends. did you catch ted cruz doing his impression yesterday? >> last fall, jay leno said, so, president obama called me, he said, jay, if you like your job, you can keep it. >> he's got jokes. lfr all right. that wraps up this hour of "jansing and co." i am ari melber in for chris jansing. "news nation" with tamron hall is up next.

we know we're not the center of your life, but we'll do our best to help you connect to what is.

good morning, everyone, i'm tamron hall and this is "news nation." we have two breaking stories we're following out in california, it's being called a volatile monster storm and it's hammering the state right now. mandatory evacuations are under way just in los angeles. the storm could cause dangerous mudslides from the mountains and police are warning people they face, quote, injury and/or death if they ignore this very serious order. now the heavy rain's the biggest in california in nearly two years are causing flash flooding throughout the state, forcing officials to close several major highways. preparations have been under way for days and first responders are on high alert. the san jose fire department, for example, has been tweeting pictures of a number of flood rescues just this morning, including this one of a motorist who was caught by the flash flood. the extreme weather in california is part of a massive storm that will move across the country over the next few days and into next week, impacting

most of the country. the storm is expected to bring more rain, snow, and ice to areas that are already enduring brutal temperatures with forecasters predicting up to a foot of snow from indianapolis to new york. let's start, though, with what's happening on the ground in california, nbc's miguel almaguer is standing by where people have been forced to evacuate. >> reporter: tamron, good morning, it has been hammering rain nearly the entire day here in southern california. we've seen rain all across the state. we've got about a year's worth of rain in this one storm alone. i want to show you the dangerous situation here, you can see these homes behind me just above them, a mountainside that was ravaged by fire not long ago, in fact, the fire is still smoldering a month later. the concern is the storm will run off the mountains and literally run into these homes behind me. because of that threat, they've evacuated about 1,000 homes i